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 The Advanced Thermal Conversion Laboratory, located in NREL's Thermal Test Facility, offers state-of-the-art accuracy, speed, and flexibility to develop next generation HVAC technology. |
Since 1977, state-of-the-art testing facilities at NREL have enabled in-house scientists, engineers, and industry partners to advance cooling technologies. Each facility at the laboratory is designed for particular types of analyses and evaluation. Collectively, the facilities are used to evaluate novel desiccants, components, and systems; assist industry in product development; and validate analytical models of desiccant cooling components and systems.
NREL has been using advanced diagnostic techniques, such as infrared thermography and tracer gas techniques, for further understanding of the behavior of desiccant wheels.
Heat- and Mass-Transfer Test Facility
Research conducted at NREL measures the properties of desiccant dehumidifier cores under controlled airflow conditions, including various barometric pressures. Facility staff also evaluate fundamental thermal and fluid-science parameters of new core designs, identifying promising concepts before scale-up to full-size components.
Advanced Thermal Conversion Laboratory
The Advanced Thermal Conversion Laboratory (PDF 911 KB) (Download Acrobat Reader), located in NREL's Thermal Test Facility along with ventilation and heat exchanger effectiveness labs, houses state-of-the-art temperature, humidity, flow-rate, and pressure instruments. These provide the highest accuracy available for psychrometric measurements. Testing for larger devices such as enthalpy exchange and liquid desiccant systems is also provided here with broader ranges of temperature and humidity test conditions, as well as increased capacity.
The U.S. Department of Energy and industry calls on this lab's unique capabilities to develop next-generation HVAC and CHP equipment and concepts. The lab addresses industry's needs in many areas:
- Solid and liquid desiccant dehumidification and cooling
- Waste-heat recovery for CHP and distributed power generation
- Energy recovery and ventilation in buildings
- Sensing and removing indoor air contaminants
- Quantifying the benefits of enhanced ventilation and humidity control.
Using cutting-edge sensors, data acquisition, and diagnostic techniques, NREL's experienced researchers produce test results to the highest standards of data quality. Fully automated control and measurement equipment produces steady-state results in a fraction of the time required by a test chamber. The result is rapid generation of comprehensive performance maps and accelerated development of prototypes.
Dual test stations and unique conditioning-and-control systems seamlessly accommodate fundamentally different technologies, with no downtime for experimental reconfiguration. Technologies under inspection vary from residential to commercial scale and from liquid to air-cooled, and they include conventional as well as not-in-kind devices.
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